At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead a team to build and scale shared services for AI research and production.
- Company: Join Reflection, a pioneering lab making intelligence accessible for everyone.
- Benefits: Top-tier salary, stock options, comprehensive health benefits, and unlimited vacation.
- Other info: Dynamic environment with opportunities for professional growth and team celebrations.
- Why this job: Shape the future of AI while mentoring a talented engineering team.
- Qualifications: Experience in building teams and deep knowledge of distributed systems.
The predicted salary is between 75600 - 92400 £ per year.
Our Mission
Reflection is a research lab making intelligence open and accessible for everyone to use, customize, and build on. We build open models that let anyone control their intelligence and help shape the future of AI. Our mission: make intelligence open and accessible to all.
ABOUT THE ROLE
Reflection's Shared Services team builds and operates the shared services that power our research, training, and production environments—the systems multiple teams depend on for model development, deployment, and evaluation. Sharding, replication, coordination, high-concurrency correctness, and tail-latency under real load are genuinely hard systems problems, and everything above us assumes this layer just works. As Shared Services Lead, you'll provide leadership of the team that builds these services. You'll build, mentor, and grow the engineers who own this layer, guide the technical and architectural decisions that shape it, and work closely with our research and training teams to turn their needs into reliable platform primitives. You'll stay close enough to the stack to make targeted contributions as an individual contributor and to maintain a deep understanding of the team's technical work.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Build, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of systems engineers. Coach and support your reports in understanding, and pursuing, their professional growth.
- Provide front-line leadership of engineering efforts to build and scale our shared services distributed systems design, container and Kubernetes abstraction layers, and the service platform teams build on.
- Stay hands-on: become familiar with the team's technical stack enough to make targeted contributions as an individual contributor.
- Manage day-to-day execution: prioritize the team's work and manage projects in a highly dynamic, fast-paced environment.
- Guide technical and architectural decisions, emphasizing scalability, robustness, and reliability SLI/SLO design, healthy on-call practices, consistency, backpressure, and tail-latency under load.
- Work closely with our research and training teams to co-design the primitives they depend on, and translate their needs into platform investments and roadmap.
- Raise the bar for technical judgment, prioritization, communication, and execution in a fast-moving environment.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- Experience building, mentoring, and growing engineering teams while staying technically hands-on.
- Deep distributed-systems engineering experience, with real ownership of production-grade systems at scale.
- Strong coding ability and the credibility to earn the technical trust of a strong team.
- Depth in at least one of the team's core areas — distributed systems architecture, service reliability, or the container/service platform — with the ability to learn the rest.
- Fluency with the reliability toolkit: SLIs/SLOs, on-call, sharding and replication, coordination services, and tail-latency optimization.
- Ability to guide strategy and drive execution in a fast-moving, zero-to-one environment, and to partner effectively with research and training teams.
What We Offer:
- Top-tier compensation: Salary and equity structured to recognize and retain our talent globally.
- Stock options: Everyone who joins and contributes to Reflection's success gets to share in the upside through stock options.
- Health & wellness: Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and life, with an annual wellness allowance.
- Meals: Lunch and dinner are provided in the office daily.
- Life & family: 22 weeks paid parental leave for all new birthing and non-birthing parents, including adoptive and surrogate journeys.
- Vacation days: Unlimited paid time off in the U.S. and 30 days in the U.K.
- Sponsorship support: We sponsor visas to help exceptional talent join our team and support long-term immigration pathways where applicable.
- Team building: We have regular off‑sites, happy hours, and team celebrations.
Export Control Notice: This position may require access to technology or source code subject to the U.S. Export Administration Regulations. Any offer of employment for this role may be conditioned on the Company's ability to provide the candidate with access to such technology or source code in compliance with applicable U.S. export control laws, which may require the Company to seek government authorization.
Member of Technical Staff - Engineering Lead, Shared Services in London employer: Reflection
At Reflection, we pride ourselves on being an exceptional employer that champions innovation and collaboration in the rapidly evolving field of AI. Our inclusive work culture fosters personal and professional growth, offering top-tier compensation, comprehensive health benefits, and unlimited paid time off to ensure a healthy work-life balance. Join us in shaping the future of open foundational models while enjoying unique perks like daily meals and generous parental leave policies, all within a dynamic and supportive environment.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Member of Technical Staff - Engineering Lead, Shared Services in London
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at Reflection or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to Reflection.
✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
Don’t underestimate the power of online developer communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and even Reddit. Participate in discussions, share your projects, and build your visibility. We can often find opportunities through these channels that can lead to a full-time gig at companies like Reflection.
✨Explore Job Boards Specifically for Tech Roles
Keep your eyes peeled on job boards that focus on tech roles. Sites like TechCareers or Stack Overflow Jobs can often have listings for companies like Reflection that might not show up on broader job sites. Make it a habit to check these regularly, and don’t hesitate to apply directly through our website!
We think you need these skills to ace Member of Technical Staff - Engineering Lead, Shared Services in London
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at Reflection.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at Reflection and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at Reflection
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If Reflection uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.